Tuesday, December 20, 2011

As I'm gearing up to switch from academic to creative writing, I'm jotting some ideas for short stories that I've been planning to write for the following projects:

1] Pandemonium: Stories of Smoke to be edited by Jared Shurin and Anne Perry: I've been following the critical non-fiction these two have produced on Pornokitsch to be confident that they know what they are doing and their first anthology has gathered some of the biggest rising names in genre to date, which in its own is one hell of a feat.

Coming in spring of 2012, Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke brings you London as you've never seen it before - science fiction and fantasy in the great tradition of Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens lived and breathed London in a way few authors
ever have, before or since. In his fiction, his non-fiction, and even
his own life, Dickens cast an extraordinary shadow over the city he so
loved - so much so, indeed, that his name has become synonymous with a
certain image of London. A London of terrible social inequality and
matchless belief in the human potential; a London filled with the comic
and the repulsive, the industrious and the feckless, the faithful and
the faithless, the selfish and the selfless.

This London is at once an historical artifact and a living,
breathing creature: the steaming, heaving, weeping, stinking,
everlasting Smoke.

2] Bibliotheca Fantastica to be edited by Claude Lalumiere & Don Pizarro: Dagan Books impressed me with their Cthulhurotica anthology, which will delightfully be continued come next year, and Lalumiere has been hailed as a force in the short form, so I wish to be involved hopefully as a contributor.

What we want: Stories having to do with lost, rare, weird, or imaginary
books, or any aspect of book history or book culture, past, present,
future, or uchronic. Any genre. Although the fantastical is not
essential per se, stories should evoke a sense of the fantastic, the
unknown, the weird, wonder, terror, mystery, pulp, and/or adventure,
etc.

3] Fungi to be edited by Orrin Grey & Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Creepy mushrooms in an anthology produced by one of the key authorities on creepiness. Yes, please.

Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia tackle the darkest of all
horrors: fungi. William Hope Hodgson’s “The Voice in the Night” and its
Japanese adaptation, Matango, terrified and fascinated the editors. And now, they’re back for more.

Fungi
is an anthology of dark speculative fiction (horror, fantasy, science
fiction, and any other variant, such as steampunk) focused solely on the
fungal. No happy mushrooms from Mario Bros. A fungus of some
type must be a key element in the story, not just a throwaway element. A
character can attempt to poison someone with a mushroom, mushroom
cultivation may be of importance to the story, the dark patch of mould
on the ceiling may begin to terrify an unhappy tenant, a group of people
may consume hallucinogenic mushrooms, etc.

We are looking for a variety of settings and protagonists. Mushrooms sprout around the world, after all.

4] The Worldbuilder Project inspired by Empire State written by Adam Christoper: Technically not an anthology in the traditional sense of the word, but I think it can be fitted here. The project itself can lead to a potential inclusion into an anthology, which is always a bonus.